How We Found a Sunscreen You'll Love

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By Birnur Aral, Ph.D.

May 19, 2014

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Even though you're supposed to wear sunscreen year round, it's doubly important that you lather it come beach season. To help you find a sunscreen you'll actually want to wear this summer, we began our search last August. We canvassed the market for the most prominent broad-spectrum SPF 50 products and ended up with a group of 17 sunscreens: nine lotions, six aerosols, one milk, and one gel formula. Three out of the 17 were mineral sun blocks (that deflect UV light), while the rest were chemical sunscreens (that absorb UV light).

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The Skin Test
Under the guidance of Dr. Stephen Q. Wang, Head of Dermatology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Basking Ridge, NJ, we focused our testing on finding sunscreens that consumers would most likely use. This included sunblocks that were not super greasy, didn't leave behind a milky residue, and did not have a strong fragrance. As Dr. Wang puts it: "If you don't like it, you won't use it."

We sent sunscreens to 332 volunteers in 41 states, obscuring labels so testers didn't know which products they had. While testing out the anonymous products, each consumer tester wore the sunscreens at least two times all over their bodies. During their test, some testers exercised outdoors (66%), some went to the pool and/or swam (52%), some went to the beach (37%), some did yard work or gardening (24%), and some went boating or sailing (16%). At the end, the testers completed a 13-question survey and offered their open-ended positive and negative comments.

The Stain Test
Back in our Research Institute, Carolyn Forte, our Home Appliance and Cleaning Products director, put the sunscreens through a stain challenge. She first washed 100% cotton t-shirts in hot water to remove any pre-treatment on the fabric. She then applied a measured amount of each sunscreen directly onto the t-shirts.

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After the stains set for four hours, she used an industry standard to grade each stain on a five-point scale (5 being no staining showed, and 1 being severe staining showed). She let the stains dry overnight, then machine washed the t-shirts with other garments in hot water with the recommended dose of liquid detergent. After the cycle, she let the t-shirts air-dry and evaluated them again for any remaining stains on the same five-point scale. (Here, an example of one the stained t-shirts after a run through the washing machine. The grid separated the various sunscreens so we could easily see how each of them stained the shirt.)

The Results
All of the sunscreens scored excellently for preventing sunburn and for their water resistance. But, the leaders of the pack were the non-aerosol chemical sunscreens, like Hawaiian Tropic Silk Hydration — our volunteer testers noted that they easily absorbed into the skin and didn't leave behind a filmy residue.

As a group, our testers were less than enthusiastic about aerosol chemical sunscreens. Volunteers didn't like their added fragrance, their texture, and some found them irritating to their skin. In terms of staining and stain removal, the mineral sunscreens trumped the chemical sunscreens for being easiest to zap; overall, aerosols stained the worst.

The Takeaway
If you already have a sunscreen you love, keep using it, but if you're in the market for something new, try one of our top five winners. And always make sure that you're applying one shot glass full of lotion on your entire body, or spraying your body with an aerosol until you get a sheen. Do this every two hours and after swimming or sweating.

Birnur Aral, Ph.D., is the director of the Good Housekeeping Research Institute Health, Beauty, and Environmental Sciences Department.